Technology Flavored: News Makers Of 2017

DQ Channels looks back at the headline grabbers of 2017; with a dash of technology flavoured in

Arun Jaitley

Currently a Rajya Sabha member from Gujarat. Since 26th May 2014, Minister in the Cabinet of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi. Currently looking after the Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Government of India.

If PM Modi is the face behind all that’s happening in India(Demonetisation, Budget, GST). Jaitley can be regarded as the brains behind several of those initiatives. This decorated politician has already served a number of roles and his influence behind the demonetization initiative can’t be disregarded either.

He has also been giving people a proper idea of how long it may take for things to get back to normal. In his budget speech this year, he also announced a number of measures keeping the highly-crucial farm sector in mind.

Sushma Swaraj

Sushma Swaraj is an Indian politician, former Supreme Court lawyer and the current Minister of External Affairs of India, in office since 26 May 2014. A leader of Bharatiya Janata Party, Swaraj is the second woman to be India’s Minister of External Affairs, after Indira Gandhi.

At the age of 25 in 1977, she became the youngest cabinet minister of the north Indian state of Haryana. Sushma Swaraj has been playing a major role ever since she was instituted as the Union External Affairs Minister in 2014. She has always had her plate full considering the visits PM Modi has made in his tenure.

In 2016, she has been to Sri Lanka, Nepal, Iran, Russia, Myanmar, and Italy. She has also been recently named on the Global Thinkers 2016 list of FirstPost, an honour for which she has been congratulated by Narendra Modi as well. She is also regarded by many as one of the finest India has produced in her position.

Mukesh Ambani

Mukesh Ambani is the Indian business magnate who is the chairman, managing director and largest shareholder of Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), a Fortune Global 500 company and India’s most valuable company by market value. He holds a 44.7% stake in the company.

RIL deals mainly in refining, petrochemicals, and in the oil and gas sectors. Reliance Retail Ltd., another subsidiary, is the largest retailer in India. This year Mukesh Ambani has launched Jio – a 4G phone service – that has led to a price war of sorts in the telecom market of India, which is already much more competitive than it should be.

This was done at a Reliance Industries shareholders’ meeting during September. At present, his organization is earning revenues worth $44.7 billion but is engaged in a legal battle with the Indian Government over getting back the costs it incurred for developing a gas field.

Shashi Tharoor

Shashi Tharoor an Indian politician and a former diplomat who is currently serving as Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha from Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala since 2009. He also currently serves as Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs and All India Professionals Congress of the Indian National Congress.

His tweet attacking the Centre over demonetisation by using new Miss World Manushi Chhillar’s surname has invited strong criticism from two senior ministers in the Haryana government. “What a mistake to demonetise our currency! BJP should have realised that Indian cash dominates the globe: look, even our Chhillar has become Miss World!” Mr Tharoor had said on the micro-blogging site, seemingly punning on the word ‘chillar’, which means “loose change” in Hindi.

Haryana Women and Child Development Minister Kavita Jain slammed Mr Tharoor, saying he “indulged in the callous and reckless wordplay on new Miss World Manushi Chhillar”. She asked him to apologise and said Haryana-born Manushi Chhillar was not just the pride of the state, but also of the entire nation. Tharoor later apologised for his remark, which, he said, was a “light-hearted” comment and also praised Manushi Chhillar.

Debjani Ghosh

On Nov. 10, India’s IT lobby group, representing over 2,100 homegrown and multinational companies, named Debjani Ghosh as its next president. She comes to Nasscom following a 21-year stint at Intel. Before she resigned from the tech giant this February, she served as its South Asia managing director.

Currently, she is an independent director on YES Bank’s board and a member of Cisco’s India advisory board. Also, she has served as Group Vice President of Sales and Marketing and Managing director of South Asia at Intel Corporation until March 2017. A subsidiary of Intel Corporation since January 1, 2012, and also served as its Director of Sales and Marketing for Southeast Asia until December 2011.

Vijay Shekhar Sharma

Vijay Shekhar Sharma is an Indian entrepreneur and founder of mobile payments company, Paytm. Vijay Shekhar Sharma is one of the shrewdest CEOs in India with a large fortune amassing more than a billion dollars. But more than that, Sharma is one of the most candid executives who like to share and give back to the start-up and investment community.

Without a doubt, his humble nature, blunt opinions and sharp intellect have made him the man he is today. Sharma faced with many challenges and knew he had to work smarter but he couldn’t face the constant barrier head-on at that young age. He finally decided he had to be innovative to make it work.

Narayana Murthy

Nagavara Ramarao Narayana Murthy (born 20 August 1946), commonly referred to as Narayana Murthy, is an Indian IT industrialist and the co-founder of Infosys, a multinational corporation providing business consulting, technology, engineering, and outsourcing services.

Murthy studied electrical engineering at the National Institute of Engineering, University of Mysore, and MTech at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. Hours after the InfosysBSE 2.60 % CEO and MD Vishal Sikka blamed co-founder and former CEO Narayana Murthy for his resignation, NRN hit back, saying he will reply to all the allegations when the time is right. Murthy, who has been in a long-running battle with the board and top management of the company he founded with six others over three decades ago, said his concern primarily was the “deteriorating standard” of corporate governance at Infosys.

Arnab Goswami

Arnab is an Indian journalist and television news anchor. He is the managing director of the news channel Republic TV which he co-founded along with Rajeev Chandrasekhar. Goswami was the editor-in-chief and a news anchor of the Indian news channel Times Now and ET Now, from 2006 to 2016. At Times Now, he anchored the Newshour, a live debate, that at 9 pm (IST) weekdays on the channel.

He also hosted a special television programme Frankly Speaking with Arnab. On 1 November 2016, Goswami resigned as Editor-in-Chief of Times Now. His news channel Republic TV was launched on 6 May 2017. Known to so many people in India and around the world that he can justifiably be called the face of Indian news media, Goswami created quite a stir this year when he put down his papers as the Editor-in-Chief of Times Now.

He has recently announced a new news channel named Republic, which has created quite a stir with people such as Harsh Goenka and Mohandas Pai sharing their views on the same on Twitter. People are also expecting big things from the channel.

Vishal Sikka

Vishal Sikka was an Executive Vice Chairman of Infosys and former Indian American CEO and MD of Infosys. On 18 August 2017, he stepped down as CEO and MD of Infosys. He quit as Executive Vice Chairman of Infosys on 24 August 2017 when Nandan Nilekani was appointed as the new Non-Executive Chairman of the Board.

Prior to joining Infosys, Sikka was a member of the Executive Board and the Global Managing Board of SAP AG, leading all SAP products and innovation globally. In his 12 years at SAP, Sikka led SAP’s product portfolio including the breakthrough in-memory platform, SAP HANA, and all their applications, cloud and technology solutions.

He is credited with accelerating SAP’s development processes, transforming its innovation culture and leading several successful product co-creation initiatives with clients. He is also the creator of the concept of ‘timeless software’, which represents the renewal of products without disruption to customer environments. Sikka left the SAP board in May 2014 for “personal reasons”,[3] and was announced as CEO and MD of Infosys on 12 June 2014. After three years at Infosys, Sikka left suddenly on 18 August 2017, possibly due to a conflict with the co-founders.

Aditi Gupta

Aditi Gupta, Founder of Menstrupedia, is shattering the taboos surrounding menstruation in the society. She started her venture in 2012 to provide informative content to girls and women and to act as a friendly guide during their period.

She has been working relentlessly to educate society about menstrual health and hygiene. According to her the best business advice she has received was from Naru Narayanan (ReelBox India Entertainment), and Vijay Anand (Startup Centre).